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Roger Williams, a Square Peg in a Round Hole

Dan Graves, MSL

We have not always enjoyed the religious rights we now have. Christian
theology, by making men conscious of their worth to God, who sacrificed
his Only Begotten Son for them, made them important as individuals. In
struggling for religious freedom, our forefathers won civil rights for
us.

An important actor in that struggle was Roger Williams. England in
the seventeenth century knew few religious rights. In that century
George Foxe, the founder of the Quakers and John Bunyan, the Baptist
author of Pilgrim's Progress, languished in English prison for
daring to differ from the majority in their religious views. Some
Christians fled to the newly-founded American colonies to escape
persecution at home.

Roger was one of them. He arrived in New England on this day, February 5, 1631, a day remembered by
many as "Freedom's Cause Day."

A brilliant scholar, Williams was ordained in the Church of England
while at Cambridge. His liking for Puritan views, however, soon forced
him out of the established church. So he migrated to New England. There
he was offered the congregation at Boston but turned it down, because
its people had not broken with the Church of England. The "godly" must
separate from the "ungodly" if they were to stay pure, he said.

Salem and Plymouth, his next stops, soon tired of Williams. He was
like a square peg in a round hole, for he told them that it was wrong
for them to take Indian land without paying for it. He also insisted
that the government of the colony had no right to set up a "civil power
and officers to judge the convictions of men's souls..." This was too
much for New England's Puritans. They believed government was required
to enforce godliness and protect true religion as they defined it.

The government expelled Roger Williams from Massachusetts. After
wandering for fourteen weeks in the bitter cold of winter, he settled at
Narragansett Bay, in territory that would become the colony of Rhode
Island. Putting into practice his beliefs, he purchased his land from
the Indians and founded a town which he named Providence. He learned the
Indians' language and wrote a key to it.

In 1644 he wrote a defense of religious freedom. That same year he
secured a charter for his new colony, Rhode Island. This small region
became a haven for those whose beliefs differed from the majority.
Williams himself abandoned Puritanism and the Baptist church he had
helped found (the first in America), opposing all sects and creeds.

But Rhode Island became a model of toleration and of the separation
of church and state. If Roger Williams had not been willing to suffer
for his beliefs, we might not now enjoy the liberties we do. Three
hundred and fifty years later we must sometimes wonder whether we will
keep the freedoms men like Roger Williams won with such struggle.